


The Body

by robberreynard



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: M/M, Possession, Pride Demon - Freeform, possessed!Hawke
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-14
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-04 14:59:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1783165
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/robberreynard/pseuds/robberreynard
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kinkmeme prompt: http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/11099.html?thread=44411739#t44411739</p><p>Eren Hawke, as his family knew him, died when he was young. In his place is a demon of pride puppeting Eren's body. But it seems more than a decade in a human host does strange things to a spirit, and the demon Mitos is finding himself caring for the fragile mortals around him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> How could I resist a prompt like this?

He was small. Mitos noticed that first, the boy was all ribs and elbows and spindly legs. Far too small to stand up to the metal men surrounding them both, swords drawn, voices ringing tinnily from behind their steel helms. She was smaller still, hardly coming up to the hip of the templar grabbing her wrist and pulling her. Were it not for the other one savagely swinging his makeshift weapon into their legs and staggering the older men, they would have already taken her away. But fierce as he was, he was still only a child, a small little thing standing up to metal monstrosities with nothing but a wooden stick. 

That was why he called out to the Fade, of course. Whether he meant to do it or not, in the heat of his confusion and fear, he had opened the little door in a mortal mind and called to the creatures beyond the Veil. Mitos was the first one through. It was impressive for one that was not a mage to tap into this little connection, and Mitos' curiosity urged him in more than anything. There was a special kind of magic in this child, not the kind that allowed him to cast a spell or summon demons, but something stirred in him all the same.

“You can't take her! I won't let you!” He struck again at the men surrounding he and his sister. The templar easily deflected the blow, more irritated at the child's interference than anything. 

_You will fail_ , Mitos whispered, his voice filling up the boy's skull in an echo of the world he had inadvertently beckoned.

 _I can't...I can't, I have to protect her!_ The boy's own thoughts were haggard and weary and shrill with urgency. He did not shy from the foreign spirit, a good sign that Mitos would not struggle when the time came to take control of his body. Maybe he would even trust him.

 _You're not strong enough. They will take your sister away._ His eyes were welling with tears at that, but he didn't feebly argue like so many mortals, insist that he was strong. He knew it was the truth. The boy was smarter than most, it would seem. He didn't stare into the face of the inevitable and foolishly hope.  
Even knowing it was a bleak endeavor, he threw himself at the nearest templar, wooden weapon battering uselessly against his steel plating. 

“Andraste's tits, are you really so scared of this twerp? We can't be here all day playing swords with him!” One of the templars was advancing on him now, brandishing his sword at his side. Mitos felt the tangible fear in the boy's stomach at the sight of his sword flashing in the morning light. The girl was pleading and writhing in her captor's grasp, her high voice rising to a piercing scream as the knight's sword slid easily through the boy's ribcage and out his back. Mitos could taste the blood filling the boy's mouth. He collapsed.

His mind and heart were racing now, he desperately and clumsily gripped to the wound, pressing to keep more blood from spilling out of the deep hole gored through his chest. Fear and despair mingled in a thick haze that shrouded his dying mind. He reached out for the younger one, some dim part of him not willing to accept that he had failed as Mitos warned, and stretched out a red hand to her. She was sobbing, trying to rip herself from their grasp to no avail. Once more Mitos rose into his thoughts.

_Let me in._

_I don't want to die..._ “Help me...” he faintly whispered to the retreating figures of the metal men. 

_You are going to die, boy._

_Eren..._ His head sank to the cold ground beneath him, the rhythmic pumps of blood beginning to come slower and slower. _My name is Eren..._

 _Eren._ Mitos knew that the moment he tore through the Veil into the boy's mind, but he obliged the dying child's half-delirious pleasantry.  
 _There is nothing I can do to stop this. You will die here._ The tears he had been holding back were spilling over in lazy trails down his face and through the spattering of blood on his cheeks. _Your sister will be taken. They are going to_ take _Bethany. If you let me in, I will ensure every last one of them will pay for this._

His chest clenched with a struggled breath as he steeled himself for his answer. Mitos felt a distant tug in the mind he inhabited.

 _Bethany stared up at him from her crib, only a few months old, and gurgled happily at her older brother as he hung over the side of the bed. She reached up to him with stubby little hands. Eren's fingers brushed hers and he marveled at how small she was, her tiny hands wrapped around his index finger. Father had told him he would need to look after her and Carver both now, set a good example for the two of them. Eren's pride swelled at the thought of being an older brother. He knew, leaning down to kiss a spring of a curl on her forehead, that he would have to be the best he could be, for her sake and for Carver's._  
The scene was vivid, colored by a child's memory, and blew away the moment it appeared like sand on the wind. 

_Swear you'll do it. Swear on whatever honor you have that you'll help her._

_I swear it._ Whatever an oath from a demon was worth. 

_Then do it... Whatever it is, do it. Please, please... keep her safe._ Life was ebbing from him, the last reserves of his strength bleeding away. Ice steadily crept into his veins and clawed at his lungs. Breathing became difficult, and his vision began to dim as he stared at the quickly vanishing forms of the templars and his little sister. In the moment between the sigh of his last breath and the shallow thrum of what would be his final heartbeat, Mitos took him. 

The sudden flush of energy through broken limbs was almost euphoric, the cold, hollow shell of death broken by Mitos' being roaring into the dying body like a tidal wave. The lungs expanded in a deep gasp, the heart hitched, then began beating wildly, fingers flew to clutch at the dirt beneath him. And suddenly there was a world of mortal senses. The coppery smell of Eren's blood on the ground, the colorless gray of a stormy sky overhead, the feeling of a breeze brushing featherlight over his skin. He caught scent of wildflowers and rain on the wind. He could hear Bethany sobbing down the road from him and the clink of armor and then the silence. 

He rose to his feet, gangly and awkward as they were, and stood as tall as a twelve-year-old could, taking in his new surroundings. His mortal eyes riveted on the men that slowly trudged away from the boy they had killed, and on Bethany as she lay slumped over their shoulder. She was motionless. They had struck her to keep her quiet. Again the memory of little fingers wrapped around his surfaced in his mind, a thought that was and was not his own, and it stirred a kind of bloodlust in him reserved only for mortals and rage demons. 

He was running, he was twenty feet away, ten feet, five, and then he was on them. They never heard his steps, he had been swift and silent on his approach. One of their swords was already in his hands, already buried in the slit in the templar's armor where his arm met his torso, already singing through the air to bite into the second knight. The others were clattering loudly as they tried to draw their swords but they were slow. Eren Hawke was surprisingly nimble, more so with Mitos guiding his body, and one templar was felled before the next had the time to unsheathe his blade, another slumping lifeless into the dirt by the time the others could move to stop him.

“Bloody flames, how is he-” Mitos had bound from the body of one templar onto the other, sword sinking into his throat before he could voice his astonishment. Before he hit the dirt, he sprung off his chest and landed on the last, this small, agile form of his standing with easy balance on the templar's shoulders. This one had just begun to curse when Mitos grasped either sides of his helmeted head and twisted until there was a loud snap and the unmistakable crack of a vertebrae popping out of place. The last went slack and crumpled atop the body of one of his fellow knights. 

Still knelt over the freshest kill, he stretched out a hand, opening and closing his fist, testing out how far his fingers could stretch and wondering at the thin cords of muscle that appeared and vanished into his soft flesh. Not a powerful body. Not a mage either. It was small, even for a mortal child, but this did it credit. It was fast, it was flexible, it had just enough weight behind it to sink a sword through armor and muscle. It would do. 

He rose now, stepping between the corpses in metal to kneel beside the little head of black curls that lay half pinned under a fallen templar. Bethany. A name that rung fondness in some distant corner of this mind. There were many pleasant memories of her there. Strangely, though there still were bits and pieces of a fractured mind, Mitos could no longer feel the little thread of Eren Hawke's consciousness between him and the Fade. Thoughts, memories, the most ingrained feelings remained, but there was no simpering voice of a scared child trapped in his own mind. The boy was gone. 

He looked down at the tiny form, fingers flitting over the curl resting on her brow. He had done his part. A small part, really, deal with a few insolent mortals and claim a body all for your own. Contract fulfilled, wish granted, sister saved. What else was there to do? 

“A demon's oath is an oath all the same, isn't it little sister?” He chuckled, amused at his use of the word and at how high his voice sounded now. “I am no oath breaker. You are safe, are you not? Dear big brother got his wish.” The templar's armor clinked noisily when he gripped him by the shoulder and rolled his body off to free the little girl's legs. His hand was stroking her head. Had he even willed his body to move? It seemed like an action written into the very muscles of this body, to touch, to comfort. Mitos almost pulled away, but the warmth of her flesh and the soft threads of her hair was an odd comfort, another leftover from the freshly dead Eren Hawke, and he sat there awhile to revel in the feel of her dark black locks ghosting over his skin. His knuckles traced over her forehead, back and forth.

She wasn't safe. Not yet anyway. If he left her on her own out here, she might catch sick from the rain threatening in the gray skies above them, or be taken by someone that stumbled upon the bodies. 

He could scoff and jest about the merit of a demon's honor, but in truth, a demon's oath wasn't just an oath, it was as sacred a vow as his kind could speak. And he had promised the dying boy he would keep this one safe. It was a promise that was difficult to twist to his own will, like he had done with others that wished for power or status or wealth. The vow was scratching urgently at the back of his mind, urging him to ensure she was safe, far away from these corpses and any of their living brethren. As much as he detested the thought that a dead child's whim was influencing his actions, he sighed, scooped up the little form in his bloodied arms, and trudged back up over the crest of the dirt road.


	2. Chapter 2

When she stopped being 'that one' and started being 'Bethany', Mitos couldn't say.

At first he was, if anything, extremely annoyed at the closeness of the Hawke family. After he'd taken Bethany back to their home and after her father ( _his_ father, he had thought once and startled himself) healed the wound in his chest, he had intended to sneak away in the middle of the night, after the parents had given in to exhaustion. They had stayed up half the night in a panic when their eldest son returned with bloody clothes and a life-threatening injury, it didn't take them long to collapse for the night.

Only, when he was just ready to climb out of the bunk bed Eren shared with his siblings, the younger one appeared at his bedside, rubbing his eyes tiredly and muttering something about a nightmare. Carver, another remote part of himself had reminded. He would prove to be an annoying little shit in the coming years Mitos spent in the family's company. At least he was amusing at times, he did thoroughly enjoy the look of spite and jealousy the younger boy would sometimes throw him when some mortal tart shimmied her breasts in his direction instead of Carver's. Oh, and his face when the commanding officers at Ostagar praised _him_ instead of his brash little brother? Priceless. 

He could have snapped his neck when he appeared beside him that night, so many years ago. He should have, really, it would have saved him a lot of trouble in the end, and he was no stranger to snuffing out mortal souls. He was only a little bigger than Bethany. The small ones were the most fragile, he considered, almost moving to reach out and twist his fat little head clean off, but before he could move or even protest the child was climbing up into his bed and burrowing against him under the covers. Carver would never admit to doing this, but he did it often back then.

Mitos' hands twitched uneasily against the boy's head, honestly contemplating giving it a sharp jerk and sending the lad to be with his brother. How that evening went from Mitos very nearly breaking his neck to him smoothing his hands through the boy's hair for the rest of the night while he slept, he still wasn't entirely sure. 

He gave himself a month to leave. It was foolish for him to linger any longer than that, it was enough time for him to settle in this new body and for its mind to conform. After that, he would do as he always intended, he would travel and take whatever pleasures he could while he had the chance. Then a month passed and it was just one more week. One more week and he would leave these mortals to wonder where their brother had gone, he could stow away on a ship bound for Rivain or the Free Marches, somewhere he'd not yet seen. 

When that week passed, it was one week more.

One more week passed, as did another and another, until eventually his thoughts no longer lingered on where he would be a week, a month, a year from now.   
That one more week became a year, that year became two and then the years began to bleed into one another. Eren's scruff of tomato red hair grew well past his shoulders (Mitos saw little reason to cut it, and Bethany certainly seemed to take joy in braiding it), he remained shorter than most but he grew into the lithe body and quick hands and Eren had a natural talent for blades written into his muscles, making the training as a rogue much easier.   
He remained with the Hawkes through many different homes, protected them from templars, bore them through heartache and celebrated with them in joy, and the wanderlust that had drawn him to the mortal realm was waning day by day. Eventually he stopped paying mind to what ships in the harbor were sailing for where, stopped calling Leandra by her name and instead calling her 'Mother' as the others did, he even stopped considering how he could kill any one member of the family with minimal effort. 

And suddenly more than a decade had passed, and he still showed no signs of leaving.   
Why did he remain? 

He often asked himself this, yet the answer never came. He tried to convince himself it was because he loved the deception, the game of playing Eren Hawke, a game that he would always win because they would never see through the facade.   
That excuse lost its merit a long time ago, and now he didn't even have a lie to tell himself when he asked once more; Why have I remained? 

Why did he remain when Malcolm Hawke grew ill? When the older mage lay on his deathbed, the room reeking of putridity and rot and flowery smells trying to mask them, he came to the man's side. He didn't stop him when he reached out to take Eren's hand. He simply stood and listened as he croaked what would be his final words before his fingers went slack around his own, and he subconsciously tightened his grip to keep them connected. All the memories he had of the now gray haired mage came in a torrent behind his eyes. Many of these images of the past had been Eren's, but to Mitos' surprise, there were many more he had created himself. These new memories of Malcolm as a loving, just person were his and his alone. 

Why, when Lothering was burning and infested with darkspawn, did he stay by their side, did he slaughter everything that stood in their path so they could live? And why, when Carver's body fell limply to the dirt in a clatter of broken bones and metal, finally freed from the Ogre's grasp, did he feel such a gnawing pain in the pit of his stomach? When Leandra Amell, the woman who so often had touched his head and called him 'son', turned her venom on him, screamed at him, blamed him for the foolish boy's death, there was a sudden and unfamiliar weight in his chest, and it was more than anger that he was being wrongly blamed. Even days after they had fled Lothering, when they were in the bowels of a ship destined for Kirkwall, the weight remained. It intensified bit by bit whenever Leandra looked on at him with red rimmed eyes and a hollow accusation in her gaze. 

Why was it so hard to look Bethany in the eye and feel nothing? This tide of...whatever it was he felt when he looked at her was sickeningly warm and reassuring and Mitos had no idea how to handle such a sense of calm. Though he knew they weren't truly his feelings. Eren Hawke's feelings, not his own. Say what you will about the child, his spirit was strong, it stuck in the far reaches of this mind like tree sap, so thick that it was difficult to see past the last vestiges of the dead boy's thoughts at times. He made Mitos believe everything was alright when he was with Bethany and her family, even when he knew it wasn't. 

It confused him to no end. How did it come to pass that he was tethered to this mortal family like some loyal, brain dead mabari, blindly following its master? Mitos had no master. He never had. The thought that he was so swayed by mortal words enraged him, but he couldn't shake this ingrained sense of belonging when he was with her and what remained of the Hawke family. 

 

They belonged to him, he rationalized, not the other way around. The Hawkes, the homely knight Aveline they'd somehow adopted into the fold. They were his, and no one would steal another from him, no one would take Bethany or her mother or the stoic knight because _he_ laid claim to them. He would protect that which was his.

This proved difficult at times. Kirkwall was the picture of the mortal realm's beauty -even the parts of Lowtown every human bellyached about- but he hardly had time to enjoy it with all the tasks given to him. The last of the Hawkes, the one called Gamlen that even Eren had no pleasant memories of, had sold he and Bethany into servitude for a year. Time meant very little to Mitos, eons could pass in the Fade in the blink of an eye and you could drive yourself mad wondering where the time went, but it was different here. The mortal realm was ever changing, the very ground restless, the air itself hummed with the passage of time. It had been easy to lose himself in a year back in Lothering or the many dozy hamlets the Hawkes lived in before that, where the most interesting thing to happen in a month was a pregnant cow. Now, where there was people and life and where the cold stone buildings froze time to a trickle, a year felt like an eternity.   
An eternity of cracking skulls for Meeran and listening to his nonsensical cursing. 

An upside, however, was that it was easier to get away from the Hawkes and Amells in this big city. He spent many nights at the Blooming Rose, using what money he had to indulge the more base pleasures mortals could offer, away from Leandra's sad eyes and choked sobs in the middle of the night as some reminder of Carver surfaced as it always did. It wasn't traveling the world or taking over some tribe of superstitious Chasind to raise in a revolt, but it had its charms.   
He even liked the work, all things considered. After his debt was paid, he still popped by to see the foul mouthed mercenary every now and again to see if his men weren't getting a job done. Meeran took a liking to him as well. 

He would offer him the bigger jobs, the bigger pays, even information he wouldn't relent to his other men. He told him of the nobles in the city hiring men on for protection, of competing mercenary bands and their operations, on the off chance Mitos was interested in clearing out the opposition, and he even led him to dwarven expedition heading into the Deep Roads on the promise of treasure.   
A foolish endeavor, but it would prove a profitable one all the same. 

It was odd how many people flocked to them with their problems and their quests for vengeance or glory.   
Without quite realizing it, he had somehow amassed an entire group of faithfuls that followed his goal of investing in the expedition, and oddly, he didn't even need to employ old magics to sway them. They simply followed. 

A Tevinter slave, a true slave no longer as he had broken his shackles, but his mind would always be that of a slave. 

A Dalish blood mage, a sweet naïve thing that tended to eye him funny. She wasn't powerful enough to see past him to Mitos' true self, so he was never really worried about her finding out, and simply pointed out a cloud that looked like some fluffy creature whenever he caught her looking. 

Then there was his homely knight, Aveline had never been suspicious of him until he joined the Red Iron, her oath to the guard making her wary of everyone on the other side of town. 

Then of course there was his new business partner, the dwarf with the gorgeous mat of chest hair and an odd attachment to his crossbow. Mitos liked that one especially. He was an amusing creature. 

Pirates, elves, dwarves, abominations. It became a merry band of wayward travelers following in his wake. A few even seemed to like _him_ , even though he hardly considered himself a likeable person. Maybe their expectations were skewed in Kirkwall. Whatever the case, his flock of mortals steadily grew one reject at a time, until the remnants of the Hawkes and Amells weren't the only ones he had to look after.  
It was tiring. But oh yes, it most definitely had its charms.


End file.
